British Source for ISIS Twitter with Saudi Financial Support

Hackers have claimed that a number of Islamic State supporters' social media accounts are being run from internet addresses linked to the Department of Work and Pensions.

A group of four young computer experts who call themselves VandaSec have unearthed evidence indicating that at least three ISIS-supporting accounts can be traced back to the DWP's London offices.

Every computer and mobile phone logs onto the internet using an IP address, which is a type of identification number.

The hacking collective showed Mirror Online details of the IP addresses used by a trio of separate digital jihadis to access Twitter accounts, which were then used to carry out online recruitment and propaganda campaigns.

At first glance, the IP addresses seem to be based in Saudi Arabia, but upon further inspection using specialist tools they appeared to link back to the DWP.

"Don't you think that's strange?" one of the hackers asked Mirror Online. "We traced these accounts back to London, the home of the British intelligence services."

VandaSec's work has sparked wild rumours suggesting someone inside the DWP is running ISIS-supporting accounts, or they were created by intelligence services as a honeypot to trap wannabe jihadis.

However, when Mirror Online traced the IP addresses obtained by VandaSec, we found they actually pointed to a series of unpublicised transactions between Britain and Saudi Arabia.

We learned that the British government sold on a large number of IP addresses to two Saudi Arabian firms.

Read more: ISIS Encyclopedia of Terror: Who's behind it, what it's used for and how 'keyboard warriors' can become killers

After the sale completed in October of this year, they were used by extremists to spread their message of hate.

Jamie Turner, an expert from a firm called PCA Predict, discovered a record of the sale of IP addresses, and found a large number were transferred to Saudi Arabia in October of this year.

He told us it was likely the IP addresses could still be traced back to the DWP because records of the addresses had not yet been fully updated.

The Cabinet Office has now admitted to selling the IP addresses on to Saudi Telecom and the Saudi-based Mobile Telecommunications Company earlier this year as part of a wider drive to get rid of a large number of the DWP's IP addresses.

It said the British government can have no control over how these addresses are used after the sale.

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: "The government owns millions of unused IP addresses which we are selling to get a good return for hardworking taxpayers.

"We have sold a number of these addresses to telecoms companies both in the UK and internationally to allow their customers to connect to the internet.

"We think carefully about which companies we sell addresses to, but how their customers use this internet connection is beyond our control."

The government did not reveal how much money was made from selling the IP addresses to the pair of Saudi firms, because it regards this information as commercially sensitive.

Tech Bubble is About to Pop

The tech sector is no longer the hottest place to be on the stock market. Initial public offerings (IPOs) have plummeted in tech in 2015, putting the sector behind health care and financial companies.

TechCrunch is calling is the “worst year for tech IPOs since 2009.”

The U.S. IPO market has remained strong in 2015, with a total of 169 companies raising $29.9 billion from new public offerings, according to Renaissance Capital’s data base.

But unlike the last few years, the tech sector only made up 14 percent of IPOs in 2015, down from an average of 25 percent per year from 2009 to 2014. Unlike the 55 new tech IPOs in 2014 that raised over $35 billion, there have only been 23 new tech issues, raising a paltry $4.2 billion in 2015.

The total return from investing in new tech deals this year has only been 1 percent. But that has still been better than investing in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index, which fell by -3.79 percent for the week ending December 11, and is down about 2.26 percent for 2015.

About half of the tech companies that went public in 2015 are tracking for negative returns on their stock price,–including Etsy, which slumped by 41 percent. A number of other highly anticipated tech IPOs in 2015 had to cut their expected offering prices substantially to complete

their launch. Box and Square both had to cut their new issue price to below what venture capital investors had paid when the companies were still private.

Health care dominated 2015 by taking a 46 percent market share, with 78 successfully completed deals raising over $6.7 billion. Finance raised the second largest amount of cash, with 23 deals generating $5.1 billion in proceeds.

Some analysts claim that tech companies have been able to raise all the cash they need through private venture capital deals, such as the 131 “unicorns” that report having billion-dollar-plus private equity valuations. But that seems to be countered by the fact that 57 companies that were trying to go public cancelled their IPOs in 2015 after they had already paid the expenses to register with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

According to the Gartner Group, the tech sector may be in the late stages of a “Hype Cycle,” similar to how tech IPOs began shrinking 1999 and 2007 just before the tech markets plunged.

The Grass is Always Greener When it’s Stolen

Greg Corombos

As world leaders hail a climate-change agreement they say will preserve the planet for future generations, one of the leading critics of the movement behind the deal says the plan is simply a massive transfer of wealth that will have no impact on the climate and is calling attention to warming when the earth is clearly in a cooling phase.

Officials from nearly 200 nations reached agreement over the weekend in Paris to move forward in a commitment to reduce carbon emissions, but with no way to enforce the standards. Secretary of State John Kerry says the deal requires all nations to report on their emissions every five years. Kerry says public exposure will keep nations on the straight and narrow.

That approach is nothing more than a fantasy for Tim Ball, former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg. He is also the author of “The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science.”

Ball said the main accomplishment of COP 21, the meeting in Paris that involved the political officials working in concert with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IGCC, was to establish the Green Climate Fund.

“They decided that developed nations had developed by using fossil fuels and the fossil fuel byproduct, CO2, was causing climate change or initially global warming,” Ball said. “Therefore, those 23 developed nations had to pay for their sins.”

He added, “They had to put money into a fund which was then going to be distributed to the developing nations that were being punished or penalized by those developed nations.”

This goal is nothing new. Ball said the climate fund has been a goal of the COP meetings for years, dating back in large part to the Kyoto Protocol in the late 1990s. It was supposed to the be the focal point of COP 15, but it was scuttled after the East Anglia email scandal revealed emails that critics said were proof of climate science being doctored for a political agenda. He said activists simply waited a year and began pushing again.

“At COP 16, they introduced what’s called the Green Climate Fund. That’s what they were approving in Paris, which is a bank account set up in South Korea under the International Monetary Fund, at which all of these developed nations have to put money in to give out to the developing nations,” said Ball, noting that 23 nations will essentially be bankrolling 175 others

The agreement from COP 21 calls for nations to strive for zeroing out carbon emissions by 2050 and certainly 2070. That means nations have agreed to keep their carbon emissions at or below what the earth is absorbing by that time.

What frustrates Ball the most is what he calls the "corruption of climate science, including the statistics on carbon dioxide.

"They talk about the CO2 that humans emit," he said. "They don't put into the formula the amount of CO2 we are currently absorbing. For example, of the total we emit (using IGCC data), we remove 50 percent of it through agriculture."

Ball further noted even the most ardent proponents of the climate agenda have admitted the wealth transfers and carbon standards don't make any difference in the health of the planet.

"One of the key scientists involved in the corruption was a guy by the name of Tom Wigley," Ball said. "He said at the time that if we introduce the Kyoto Protocol in its original form, that is every country reduced to the amounts that we want, nobody would be able to measure the difference.

"In other words, you could take everybody off the planet, leave one scientist behind and say, 'OK, measure and tell us how much the CO2 in the atmosphere's reduced.' He wouldn't be able to do it."

Ball said Secretary Kerry has admitted the same thing.

"He said this is not going to make any significant difference in terms of CO2, but it's important in terms of political policy and sharing the wealth," Ball said. "So it's a scam from top to bottom."

In addition to that admission, Kerry stated over the weekend to Fox News Sunday that there is no way to force any nation to abide by the new deal.

"If there had been a penalty, we wouldn't have been able to get an agreement," Kerry said, confident that mandatory emissions reporting requirements would  keep everyone on target.

Ball is stunned.

"There's absolutely no point putting in rules and regulations if you can't enforce them," he said.

In addition to layers of what he believes to be misguided policies, Ball said the climate delegates are about to inadvertently double their donations to developing nations because they're not paying attention to the fact the climate is really in a cooling period.

"They've got people preparing for completely the wrong thing, which means that cost of preparing for warming will be doubled because then they'll have to turn around and offset and prepare for the cooling, which is a much greater threat to humanity and food production and energy costs and so on," he said.

Ball said the U.S. is also voluntarily placing itself at a global disadvantage with nations that don't really buy into the climate alarmism, namely Russia, India and China.

"Those three nations all came out before Paris and said that the global-warming science is a fraud. Putin said it publicly," said Ball, who argued that those nations, along with Brazil and South Africa, are poised to economically exploit the U.S. and others who are buying into the alleged threat.

"They have already set up a fund to counter and replace the International Monetary Fund, so there's a whole economic and power grab going on here," Ball said.

Meanwhile, the Climate is Damned

China, India and the rest of the developing world are already undermining the Paris global warming agreement by building new coal plants, according to analysis released Monday by the Institute for Energy Research.

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“No matter how the Obama administration or the United Nations tries to spin it, there is nothing historic or monumental about the Paris climate agreement. It is non-binding, underfunded, and unenforceable,” Chris Warren, a spokesperson for the Institute for Energy Research, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Developing nations like China and India will continue to increase their coal use because they recognize that it is the best generation source to help grow their economies and lift people out of poverty. Wind and solar just don’t cut it.”

Over 2,400 coal-fired power plants are under construction or being planned around the world, 1,171 of which will be built in China. India is building 297 and planning another 149 coal plants. Even the close American ally of Japan is building 45 new coal plants.

In China alone, consumption of coal grew by a factor of three from 2000 to 2013. It now consumes approximately half of all coal used worldwide. In 2012, coal produced 66 percent of all Chinese electricity, according to the Energy Information Administration.

  China is, by far, the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide and has been since 2006, while India has long accounted for the largest share   of global emissions growth . According to a 2014 study by the European Union, China emits 29 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide while the US is only responsible for 15 percent of the world’s emissions. The European Union itself only accounts for 10 percent and India accounts for another 6 percent.

The growth of coal power overseas means that, mathematically, American carbon dioxide reduction schemes are futile without global participation.

Attempts to reduce the emissions of developing economies have proven very ineffective, as they would inevitably be costly and reduce economic growth. For example, in exchange for a commitment by the United States to reduce its carbon emissions by 26 to 28   percent   by 2025 , China only agreed to stop increasing its emissions footprint by 2030. Even supporters of the Paris global warming agreement say it is “very unlikely to keep future warming below 2 [degrees] Celsius”, the benchmark beyond which they say climate change will be “dangerous.”

Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency has   effectively banned   the construction of new coal power plants.

Meanwhile, over a thousand heat records, and a thousand heavy snow records were broken this week, just in the US alone. It is not the polar vortex, yet. It is not sunspots. It is not anything mankind seems to be doing. But we are having weird weather. Now, the strange thing is that this is the winter of 2015, and I had a very strange experience in 2007 which I want to share. I was writing my book, Remembering the Future, and I had some very good meditation going one day. I saw the year 2015.

There were three things, among many, that I saw in this daytime experience. First, I saw that the presidency would collapse. Not the president, but the office would collapse. It would appear to be impossible for one man to win the office. It would be three. There would be one president and two vice presidents, one handling the domestic issues, and one handling the foreign issues along with the president.

The other thing that happened was an incredible snow storm in the Northwest that would close the passes. It would snow so deep that it would not melt in the summer. The 2015 winter’s snow would be snowed upon in 2016. The glaciers would grow, and there would be global cooling begin in earnest.

The other thing that would occur would be a collapse of the cash supply. Plastic and credit would be preserved, but the ability to buy significantly in cash would be ended for security reasons. Already, you cannot buy anything over $10,000 in cash without submitting your SSN and having some good reason to have that cash. It will be confiscated by the State if you are

caught with it. Any quantity over $500 will be taken from you by local police under civil forfeiture laws, and you will never see it again.

It was just strange that these obscure things that I saw in this daytime vision were actually coming to pass.

Cell Service Kill Switch

People live their lives on their cell phones these days – more and more even are cutting off their land lines as an unnecessary expense and relying solely on their wireless links to the rest of the world.

But what happens when the government decides – for whatever reason – to shut down that network?

What if it just pulls the plug on Americans’ cell service?

Among other impacts, people wouldn’t even be able to call 9-1-1 in an emergency, according to new documents filed with the U.S. Supreme Court by officials with Electronic Privacy Information Center,

The organization has been fighting a campaign to gain access to the policy established by the federal government for shutting down cell-phone networks for whatever reasons may arise.

The organization notes that the government did exactly that during a peaceful protest at a Bay Area Rapid Transit system station in 2012.

It says it got a redacted copy of the federal plan some time ago, but that essentially answered none of the significant questions.

Is the government getting bigger and more powerful? Read the prognosis in “Police State U.S.A.: How Orwell’s Nightmare is Becoming our Reality.”

It had requested that the U.S. Supreme Court review the contentious subject, and now after the government argued that it should be allowed to keep details suppressed, EPIC has filed an answer that calls again for transparency.

The filing notes the public safety concerns in maintaining a cell-phone network.

“The Federal Communications Commission … has expressed strong concerns that interruptions of cell phone service pose a threat to public safety,” the brief explains. “Such decisions by a federal agency could prevent access [to] timely medical and emergency services,” it said.

“The FCC explicitly prohibits the use of ‘jammers’ and other devices that disrupt cell phone service, and has repeatedly issued advisories to state and local government officials (including law enforcement agencies) emphasizing the importance of the prohibition.

“These techniques ‘can prevent 9/1/1 and other emergency phone calls’ from ‘getting through to first responders or interfere with’ official ‘communications that are critical to carrying out law enforcement missions,’” it said.

“It is precisely in those circumstances when the DHS contemplates a cellphone shutdown that public access to cellphone service may be most vital,” the brief explains.

It’s already happened.

One situation developed a number of years ago in New York, where service was shut down to users in a subway system section.

But the government has been less than forthcoming about the standards it uses to decide if, when and for how long to disable services.

“There is an urgency to review the lower court’s conflicting interpretation of Exemption 7(F) in this case because of the important civil liberties and safety concerns at issue,” EPIC argued. “EPIC originally filed the FOIA request in response to the shutdown of cellular service during a peaceful protest in a California transit (‘BART’) station. The DHS states in its brief that the BART officials who shut down cellphone service during a peaceful protest … acted outside the authority … But this fact only underscores the public’s need to review the DHS policy governing lawful interruption of cell phone service,” it said.

WND reported just a few months ago just exactly who could cut off Americans’ service and why isn’t for citizens to know, according to the government.

It was reported then that during the BART protest, officials cut off service for several hours after a BART security officer shot and killed a homeless man and protests erupted.

The shutdown order was made when a protest organizer sought to coordinate activists via cell phone.

The San Francisco shutdown, which is supposed to be controlled by the Department of Homeland Security’s Standard Operating Procedure 303, prevented anyone inside the transit stations “from sending or receiving phone calls, messages, emergency notifications and other transmissions,” according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The plan was adopted in 2006 by the National Communications System, but it never has been released to the public, even though it codifies a “shutdown and restoration process for use by commercial and private wireless networks during a national crisis.”

Its existence was affirmed in a 2011 report from the Obama White House that asserted the “National Security Council and the Office of Science and Technology Policy have the legal authority to control private communications systems in the United States during times of war or other national emergencies.”

In fact, the White House, through executive order, granted DHS “the authority to seize private facilities, when necessary, effectively shutting down or limiting civilian communications,” EPIC said.

But information such as the text of the policy and the protocols for when cell service is taken over need to be made public, the organization argues.

EPIC, an independent nonprofit research and advocacy center for privacy issues, brought the case against the Department of Homeland Security and points out for the high court that there are conflicting opinions now between the D.C. Circuit Court and the 2nd Circuit.

But large blocks of detail were withheld.

It does list various organizations from which it would accept messages, for example, the Alabama Emergency Management Agency.

Food Stamp Reform in Maine

Maine officials questioned the motivation behind a recent federal review of the state’s food stamp program Monday, noting the government has been highly critical of the state for trying to rein in welfare.

Maine was first notified of the results of the review Dec. 7 in a letter. The letter, which was obtained by The Bangor Daily News, warned the state has declined significantly in how effective it is at administrating food stamps. Critical issues include accuracy and the timeliness in which applications are processed. The state Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), however, argues the bad review is the result of state workers getting accustomed to a new system.

“This directly relates to a decision to modernize our process.” DHHS Commissioner Mary Mayhew tells The Daily Caller News Foundation. “We implemented a new system which centralizes the process.”

The new system is designed so state workers can access food stamp applications from one central place. The hope is the new system will allow the application process to be more streamlined. Mayhew notes it just took state workers some time to get used to the system but since the federal review, its own data has shown the process has improved.

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“It centralizes applications so work can be managed throughout the state.” Mayhew continues. “With any transition, there is a learning curve.”

The new system will also help spread applications across multiple departments, as opposed to having them consolidated on a limited group of state workers. Mayhew, though, does note some skepticism of the government review. The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) has adamantly opposed some earlier reforms the state tried to implement. FNS is the main division under the U.S. Department of Agriculture tasked with administrating food stamps.

“We welcome any review if its about our efforts to improve,” Mayhew notes. “That being said, it is difficult given some of their antagonistic behavior towards me.”

The state proposed several reforms the federal government opposed. The reforms are designed to help reduce welfare dependency. One reform would require food stamp debit cards to include a photo of the proper recipient, according to The Washington Examiner. The state also wants to ban recipients from purchasing junk food with their benefits. Additionally, the state has moved to institute working requirements which were waived for most states after the recession.

“We have certainly been in dialogue with the federal government about the improvements,” Mayhew also notes. “It is just difficult to assess whether the review is in the interest of our shared goals or a philosophical difference.”

Working requirements mean able-bodied adults without children must have a job or be in an approved job training program to qualify for food stamps. The reforms do seem to be working as intended. Dependents receiving food stamps fell by more than 90 percent in the past year.

American Betrayal: The Sellout of Taxpayer

Angry Republican lawmakers and conservatives are howling about the massive spending bill signed into law Friday – slamming the party's leadership for pushing through a "bad deal" that'll only anger voters "fed up with the Washington cartel."

Speaker Paul Ryan – defended the bipartisan deal hiking spending across government and extending a host of special interest tax breaks, critics sounded a starkly different note.

"I think this omnibus was a betrayal of the men and women who elected us," Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz said Friday.

"I think this omnibus was a betrayal of the men and women who elected us. It was Republican leadership playing Santa Claus to the lobbyists … and the special interests, and it's why people are fed up with the Washington cartel."

Alabama GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions echoed Cruz's portrayal of the deal as a "betrayal" of the trust conservative voters put in GOP leaders last year, adding that Congress should have at the very least reigned in Obama's refugee resettlement plan.

"There is a reason that GOP voters are in open rebellion," Sessions told The Washington Times.Louisiana GOP Rep. John Fleming, in a radio interview prior to his "no" vote on the deal, derided the legislation as "a laundry list of things that are not on it... and things that shouldn't be in it," calling it a "bad deal."

"We could have gone to the mat on it," he said. "[Speaker] Paul [Ryan] kind of threw down his weapons and decided not to fight on this. That's what everyone's so angry about…"

The spending deal combines $1.14 trillion in new spending next year and $680 billion in tax cuts over the coming decade. It also fully funds many of Obama's initiatives, including Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, sanctuary cities, climate change, refugee resettlement programs — and provides for an increase in foreign-worker visas.

In addition, a 40-year ban on oil exports would be lifted with the law — something long sought by Republicans.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, another GOP presidential primary contender, argued Republicans got so little because "we’ve got a very weak leadership going on in the House and Senate."

"I’m sorry, I thought they were going to do better, but I’m ashamed of them," the former Arkansas governor told "The Hugh Hewitt Show" in an interview. "I’m mad at them.

"I just felt like that they capitulated on virtually everything of great substance," he said. "Basically, the Democrats had the banquet — and what we got to do was go eat up the crumbs that were left under the table at the feet of the Democrats once they got finished gorging themselves on all the food that [President Barack] Obama wanted."

Huckabee told Hewitt the lift on oil exports wasn't good enough.

"Republicans basically got nothing that said conservatives are the majority in the House and Senate," he said. ""You can say 'Okay, well, we’re going to export oil.' Well, that's terrific. We should have been doing that anyway.

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, also slammed the deal, calling it a last-minute mess full of “wasteful, unnecessary, and inappropriate pork-barrel projects," Military Times reports.

In a blistering analysis by Breitbart News, Ryan's "first major legislative achievement" was critiqued as a "total and complete sell-out of the American people masquerading as an appropriations bill."

Laruch Pac Alert

"President Barack Obama and the entire U.S. Congress have betrayed you, the American people, by refusing, out of cowardice, to take the necessary emergency actions to prevent the greatest financial and economic crash — far worse than 1929 and 2008 — from happening in the hours and days just ahead. Unless you, the American people, stand up and demand immediate action, the nation and much of mankind is facing catastrophe at the start of the New Year.

"The entire trans-Atlantic financial system is about to blow. In just the past few weeks, $15 billion in junk and investment grade bonds have been wiped out. This is but a harbinger of an imminent total crash of the trans-Atlantic financial bubble. As of January 1, 2016, a $72 billion debt bubble is set to explode in Puerto Rico. Congress had the opportunity to act to prevent this before leaving town, but failed to act.

"An estimated $5 trillion in debt, tied to the collapsing U.S. domestic shale oil and gas sector is blowing up. In Western Canada, this bubble has already been shattered, triggering the loss of 100,000 jobs in 2015  the equivalent of 750,000 jobs lost in the United States — a crash of the real estate market, and a social breakdown. That same crisis is coming to the United States, at an accelerating rate, but on a much larger scale.

"In Europe, starting on January 1, 2016, new laws go into effect, eliminating all protections for bank depositors, who will have their savings stolen under 'bail-in' regulations, as has already happened in Cyprus. More than 10,000 Italian depositors had their savings 'bailed in' [expropriated] in the collapse of four banks this month. The same measures are included in the Dodd-Frank bill here in the United States. If your bank collapses, your life savings can be stolen to save the bank. It can and will happen here, thanks to the cowardice and corruption of your elected officials, who have kept you in the dark and violated their oaths of office.

"Congress had the chance, before leaving town, to prevent this now onrushing crisis. They were warned. They could have passed bills, already introduced in both Houses of Congress, to reinstate Glass-Steagall, the FDR legislation that broke up the Depression era too-big-to-fail banks, by separating commercial banking from all of the gambling activities. But Congress was bought out by Wall Street and failed you. President Obama is a wholly-owned creature of Wall Street and London. Wall Street is hopelessly bankrupt, and they intend to cling to power by stealing your money, wiping out your health care, and shutting down what is left of the real economy. Within days or weeks, you could be facing food shortages, hyperinflation and a complete breakdown of everything you think of as normal.

"This is all deadly serious. The world is on the cusp of a worse than Great Depression crash and a new world war. You must now act because your elected officials have abandoned you out of cowardice and corruption. They, along with President Obama, richly deserve your derision and anger, for their cowardly behavior.

Now, I cannot read you the rest of this alert because it mentions actions and consequences that I do not think are possible in this environment. The Laruch Pac has been waving the nuclear war warning flag for a year or more and of course calling for the impeachment of the president. That is not going to happen with the one party system we currently have in power. Forget about

impeachment. It will never happen with a president who does not follow the rule of law. He is not going to be removed from office.

No threat of any kind is going to stop Obama from enacting any and all laws he wants via executive order. Believe me, there is not going to be anything lame about his last year in office. The news he is going to generate about himself and his actions will steal the headlines from all the candidates, and you will swear he is still running for office.

Gun Control Back Door Update

There used to be only 13 States that did not have reciprocity agreement with North Carolina concealed carry gun permits. North Carolina is one of the original 13 colonies and has the US Constitution woven word for word into the State’s constitution for the 2nd Amendment. Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) announced Tuesday that Virginia will no longer recognize concealed carry handgun permits from 25 states that have reciprocity agreements with the commonwealth. This act is aimed at legal gun owners and will have no effect at all on illegal gun owners.

You also know, if you listen to this radio program, that Terry McCauliff was the financial manager for the Clintons when they ran the first two times. He went down to Mississippi and stole $5 million from the State, claiming he was starting up a new electric car company. Instead, he moves to Virginia and bought the governorship. By the way, the EV company never broke ground. The money didn’t come from the State, though. It came from China through the EB-5 program, which is a Chinese labor program to get green cards for Chinese nationals in exchange for stimulating American startups. The real smell test is failed completely when our investigation discovered that Gulf States Capital launders more than 75% of the Chinese money into the US under the direction of its president, Hillary Rodham’s brother. Now, you’re beginning to see just how dark and nefarious this crime syndicate is.

The Under the current policy, Virginians with a history of stalking, drug dealing or inpatient mental-health treatment cannot obtain a permit in a state with comparatively lax laws and carry a handgun legally at home. It is already this way in all other States with concealed carry permit regulations.

Herring said severing the out-of-state agreements can prevent people who may be dangerous or irresponsible from carrying a concealed handgun.

“While you are here, you are subject to the commonwealth’s gun laws,” Herring said in a news conference. The change means Virginia’s standards for obtaining a concealed weapon are applied “evenly, consistently and fairly,” he said.

The move is part of a broader effort by gun control advocates to tighten restrictions without going through GOP-controlled legislatures. This is utterly baseless and without merit whatsoever, as the permit laws in all of those States are more strict than those of Virginia. This

was a blatant attack on conservatives who believe in the 2nd Amendment, by forcing them to travel through Virginia unarmed.

Virginia Republicans reacted angrily to Herring’s action, accusing him of politicizing his office to erode Second Amendment gun rights.

“Unfortunately, I have little doubt as to his true motivations,” Virginia House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) said. “Mark Herring consistently seeks to interpret and apply the law of the commonwealth through the lens of his own personal, political opinions. He is damaging the integrity of the office he holds.”

Herring’s action, under direction of its corrupt governor, amplified a heated debate in Virginia and around the country in the wake of rampant gun violence. It is also in keeping with his embrace of liberal issues as he seeks a second term. This move will more than likely add weight behind Congressional efforts to federalize the concealed carry permit just like a driver’s license. Once you are licensed in one State, you are licensed in all States.

A former state senator, Herring gained a national profile for refusing to defend Virginia’s same-sex marriage ban and followed up with rulings siding with advocates for abortion rights and immigration reform.

Robert B. Bell III (R-Albemarle), a former state prosecutor, is the only declared Republican challenging him in 2017.

“This is another Washington-style overreach from a nakedly partisan attorney general,” Bell said. “Instead of doing the job he was elected to do, Mark Herring continues to put the political goals of his liberal supporters ahead of sound legal judgment.”

Gun rights advocates have criticized Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Herring and other Democrats for insisting on stronger gun laws after mass shootings in which the assailants obtained their weapons legally or suffered from mental illness. Mass shootings were all perpetrated with guns that were legally purchased, but not owned by the person doing the shooting.

In October, McAuliffe banned firearms in state buildings, earning a rebuke from the National Rifle Association.

[NRA challenges McAuliffe on latest gun control effort]

This year, Herring’s office began a review of reciprocity agreements Virginia has with 30 other states. Attorneys discovered that 25 of those states had concealed handgun permit regulations that were weaker than Virginia’s.

“That circumvents and undermines Virginia law,” Herring said. “And it has meant that individuals the General Assembly has specifically disqualified because of their past conduct still have a path to getting a concealed handgun permit.”

The State Police superintendent accepted Herring’s recommendation to sever agreements with those states, effective Feb. 1.

The states are: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Agreements will remain with West Virginia, Michigan, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah.

The move also means several states will no longer recognize Virginia’s concealed carry permits because they require mutual recognition of permits. Those include Florida, Louisiana, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Wyoming.

How to Start a Global Depression in One Easy Step

We saw how it was engineered in 1929. The dollar was strengthened to an all time high, and the stock market was setting records every week. People borrowed money to buy stock, because it was going up so fast you couldn’t lose. Now, in the year 2015, corporations are borrowing billions to buy stock; their own, back from the markets.

So how did it all end? Well, first, the central bank collapsed the money supply. Now, they weren’t printing billions a week to bail out the dollar like the Fed is now, but they knew how to stop the flow of money. Raise interest rates.

The Fed is stopping the printing AND they are raising rates. There are 94 million people in the USA not working. They are not in the labor force. They are not employed. That makes for a real world unemployment rate of about 16.5%, which is the rate of unemployment AFTER the crash of 1929. Keep in mind that the 1929 crash mostly affected cities and not the rural communities that were mostly farm based. The wasteland called America extends completely to every sized town making it worse than the lines of unemployed in 1929.

If the stock market crash of last Thursday and Friday had all happened on one day, it would have been the 7th largest single day decline in U.S. history.  On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 367 points after finishing down 253 points on Thursday.  The overall decline of 620 points between the two days would have been the 7th largest single day stock market crash ever experienced in the United States if it had happened within just one trading day.  If you will remember, this is precisely what I warned would happen if the Federal Reserve raised interest rates.  But when news of the rate hike first came out on Wednesday, stocks initially jumped.  This didn’t make any sense at all, and personally I was absolutely stunned that the markets had behaved so irrationally.  But then we saw that on Thursday and Friday the markets did exactly what we thought they would do.  The chief economist at Gluskin Sheff, David Rosenberg, is calling the brief rally on Wednesday “a head-fake of enormous proportions“, and analysts all over Wall Street are bracing for what could be another very challenging week ahead.

When the Federal Reserve decided to lift interest rates, they made a colossal error.  You don’t raise interest rates when a global financial crisis has already started.  That is absolutely suicidal.  It is the kind of thing that you would do if you were trying to bring down the global financial system on purpose.

Surely the “experts” at the Federal Reserve can see what is happening.  Junk bonds have already crashed, just like they did in 2008.  The price of oil has crashed, just like it did in 2008.  Commodity prices have crashed, just like they did in 2008.  And more than half of all major global stock market indexes are already down at least 10 percent for the year so far.

You don’t raise interest rates in that kind of an environment.

You would have to be utterly insane to do so.

The Federal Reserve has thrown fuel onto a global financial inferno that is already raging, and things could spiral out of control very rapidly.

As far as this upcoming week is concerned, we have now entered “liquidation season”.  Investors are going to be pulling their money out of poorly performing hedge funds before the end of the calendar year, and as CNBC has pointed out, more hedge funds have already failed in 2015 than at any point since the last financial crisis…

Liquidation season occurs when clients of poorly performing hedge funds ask for their money back. It tends to occur at the end of a quarter or year. In response, hedge funds must sell stocks in the open market to raise the money that needs to be returned to investors.

That means if a hedge fund performed poorly this year; it is probably flooded with liquidation requests right now. In fact, there have been more failed hedge funds this year than any time since 2008.

The dominoes are starting to fall.  We have already seen funds run by Third Avenue Management, Stone Lion Capital Partners and Lucidus Capital Partners collapse.  Amazingly, there are some people out there that are still attempting to claim that “nothing is happening” even in the midst of all of this chaos.

As they say, “denial” is not just a river in Egypt.

And this crisis is going to get even worse as we head into 2016.  Egon von Greyerz, the founder of Matterhorn Asset Management, is convinced that we will soon see “one disaster after another”…

Greyerz predicts, “I think we will have one disaster after another, first in the junk bond market, then in emerging markets and, after that, the subprime markets. Subprime car loans and student loans I see as another massive problem area. It is going to be one thing after another that will unravel. Since 2008, when the world almost went under, we have printed or increased credit by 50% or by $70 trillion, and the world economy is still struggling to survive. I think the

real change in confidence will come down when markets come down. . . . I think things will come down very quickly.”

And I think that he is right on target.  The global financial system is more interconnected today than ever before, and when one financial institution fails, it inevitably affects dozens of others.  And the failures that we have already seen are already spreading a wave of fear and panic that may be difficult to stop.  The following comes from Business Insider, and I think that it is a pretty good explanation of what we could see next…

Funds such as Third Avenue and Lucidus close, liquidating their portfolios. Investors, spooked by the closures and the risk that they might not be able to get their

money out of these funds, make a rush for the exits while they still can. That creates even more selling pressure. Funds sell the assets that are easiest to sell as they look to reduce risk, which pushes the

selling pressure from the risky parts of the market to the higher-quality part of the market. Things evolve from there.

If you have been waiting for the next financial crisis to arrive, you can stop, because it is already unfolding right in front of our eyes.

The only question is how bad it is going to become.

In the final analysis, I find myself agreeing quite a bit with Charles Hugh Smith, the author of “A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology and Creating Jobs for All“.  He believes that the ridiculous monetary policies of the Federal Reserve have played a primary role in setting the stage for this new crisis, and that now this giant financial “Death Star” that they have created “is about to blow up”…

By slashing rates to zero, the Fed ruthlessly eliminating safe returns for savers, pension funds, insurers and the millions of people with 401K retirement nesteggs. In effect, the Fed-Farce has pushed everyone into risk assets–and then played another Dark Side mind-trick by masking the true dangers of these risky assets.

As oil-sector debt blows up, as junk bonds blow up, and emerging markets blow up, we are finally starting to see the real costs of going over to the Dark Side of endless credit expansion and throwing the gasoline of near-zero interest rates on the speculative fires of financialization.

The Fed’s hubris has led it to the Dark Side, and now its Death Star of impaired debt, phantom collateral, speculative frenzy and bogus mind-tricks is about to blow up.

Personally, instead of saying that it “is about to blow up”, I would have said that it is already blowing up.

We have already seen trillions upon trillions of dollars of wealth wiped out around the world.

Energy companies are failing, giant hedge funds are going under, and the 7th largest economy on the entire planet has already plunged into “an outright depression“.

Everyone that warned of financial disaster in the second half of 2015 has been proven right, but this is just the beginning.  Now that the Federal Reserve has thrown gasoline onto the fire, our problems are only going to accelerate as we head into 2016.

So for the upcoming year, let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.

Michael T. Snyder is a graduate of the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia and has a law degree and an LLM from the University of Florida Law School. He is an attorney that has worked for some of the largest and most prominent law firms in Washington D.C. and who now spends his time researching and writing and trying to wake the American people up. You can follow his work on The Economic Collapse blog, End of the American Dream and The Truth Wins. His new novel entitled “The Beginning Of The End” is now available on Amazon.com.

The Washington DC Crime Syndicate Plays Politics

(Our earlier report, from late Tuesday, Nov. 23, follows.)

Election judges in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, and Florida all allegedly forwarded messages to the Trump campaign on Wednesday informing the Republican front-runner that his candidacy was invalid per state laws.  I say allegedly, because such an announcement, if true, would have dominated every news feed in the world since Wednesday. If true, and not resolved by February 1st, Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination is effectively over.

In November, a Republican election official in New Hampshire foreshadowed this move.

A former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party says Donald Trump should not be on the Republican presidential primary ballot on Feb. 9 because the GOP frontrunner has not proven he is a registered Republican and has expressed views “inconsistent” with the state and national party’s platform and by laws.

Fergus Cullen, who chaired the NHGOP in 2007 and 2008, filed a complaint on Monday with the state Ballot Law Commission, which will take up the matter, along with three other complaints focused on other candidates, beginning Tuesday morning.

According to the Christian Times Newspaper’s sources in Iowa, election officials moved to strike Trump’s name from the Hawkeye State’s ballot after his most recent comments about Hillary Clinton at last Saturday night’s Democratic debate.

“Precedent has shown that we can remove non-Republicans from the ballot if we feel that he or she is not best representing the party,” the source told us.  “Donald Trump is not a Republican, and he certainly is not best representing the party, so it is time for the party to act.”

It is unclear whether Trump’s removal from these ballots is motivated by the Republican National Committee in D.C, who would much rather see Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio receive the nomination, but the fact that Trump was removed from these ballots in the SAME DAY speaks volumes.

It is unlikely statements made by Trump in the past would play a role in determining his eligibility to be on the Republican ballot. And according to the state of New York's elections website, Trump is a registered Republican.

Trump's national campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski of Windham, called Cullen's complaint "outrageous" and said Trump's filing is "flawless."

Lewandowski said if Trump is kept off of the ballot, "Mr. Trump's supporters would probably riot in the streets of New Hampshire." His full statement appears below.

Cullen, who has been a frequent critic of Trump, told WMUR.com that he filed the complaint on his own behalf. He also said a super PAC promoting Ohio Gov. John Kasich for president was aware that he would be filing the complaint and is “on the same page” regarding the allegations that Trump is not a true Republican.

Cullen noted that Trump during the weekend resurrected the possibility that he would be open to run for president as an independent if he does not win the Republican presidential nomination and if he feels he has not been treated fairly by the party.

The pro-Kasich super PAC, A New Day for America, announced last week that it is planning to invest $2.5 million in an aggressive attack against Trump during the next two months via radio, television and digital ads in New Hampshire.

A New Day for America said last week that Trump threatened to sue the organization following the release of a television ad that charges Trump and fellow Republican candidate Ben Carson do not have the necessary experience to serve as president.

“I’m filing the complaint, and A New Day for America is making the same point,” Cullen said in an interview. “We’re on the same page in making the points in the complaint.”

In the six-page complaint, Cullen asked the Ballot Law Commission – charged by state law with deciding election filing disputes and appeals from recounts – to keep Trump off of the Republican ballot because, Cullen charged, he may not be a registered Republican and has a history of not being allegiant to the Republican Party.

“I do not believe that Mr. Trump should be placed on the Republican ballot in the New Hampshire primary,” Cullen wrote.

He also wrote: “When Mr. Trump filed his Declaration of Candidacy (on Nov. 4), he was required to ‘swear under penalties of perjury’ that he is ‘a registered member of the Republican Party.’ To my knowledge, Mr. Trump has not presented any evidence to the Secretary of State or this commission that he is a registered member of the Republican Party because his views, expressed over decades, are inconsistent with the Republican Party platform and the Republican Party of New Hampshire’s Statement of Principles and By Laws.”

Citing numerous news reports, Cullen wrote that Trump changed his registration from Republican to independent in 1999, to Democratic in 2001, and back to Republican in 2009. 

New York's official elections web site has Trump currently listed as an active Republican, however.

Cullen's complaint cited Trump’s comments in 1999, in which he said he might run for president as a member of the Independence Party of New York.

Cullen cited instances in which Trump contributed to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008 and praised her in interviews. And he cited reports in which Trump was quoted as complimenting President Obama.

Also, wrote Cullen: “The sanctity of life is a core plank of the Republican Party platform, yet Donald Trump has a long history of pro-choice advocacy and even refused to oppose partial-birth abortion.”

Cullen cited 1999 interviews in which Trump declared himself strongly pro-choice.

Trump, however, has since changed his position and has said numerous times in recent years that has become pro-life on the abortion issue.

Lewandowski issued the following statement to WMUR.com on Monday night:

“Fergus Cullen works for John Kasich who is embarrassed by how poorly he is doing in all polls. Mr. Trump was the first candidate to file, the filing is flawless, and Mr. Trump is leading in all national and state polls. Most importantly, he is leading by 19 points in New Hampshire with 32 percent of the vote. Additionally, in the latest FOX News poll, Mr. Trump easily beats Hillary Clinton one on one.

Lewandowski continued: "Number one, Mr. Trump’s views do comport with the Republican Party and, number two, from a constitutional standpoint, there is such a thing as freedom of speech.

"To file such a document against the person who is not only the frontrunner, but leading by tremendous margins is outrageous. If anything like this would ever happen Mr. Trump’s supporters would probably riot in the streets of New Hampshire. This is yet another attempt by the failed GOP establishment to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot because they know he is the only one who can Make America Great Again.”

Later that same day, the state Ballot Law Commission met to discuss and rule on the former New Hampshire Republican Party chairman's challenge to Donald Trump's eligibility to be on the GOP first-in-the-nation primary ballot.

After a hearing that lasted about two minutes, the five-member commission voted unanimously that the challenge filed by Fergus Cullen was without merit because New York state election records clearly show that Trump is a registered Republican in that state.

"Why are we here?" commission chairman Brad Cook asked Cullen.

"This isn't about whether we like Donald Trump," Cook said. "If 'Republican enough' is what this commission had to do, heaven forbid, we'd be here all day."

"You are challenging someone's filing," Cook said. "This commission is not the forum for speeches or electioneering or advancing any other candidate. If you have any information that he is not in fact a Republican, then share it with us."

Cullen replied, "I do not have that information."

The commission then voted to dismiss the challenge.

Cook said after the hearing that Cullen’s challenge “wasn’t with any substance. It was trying to make an editorial statement. The commission -- regardless of what anybody thinks of the merits or demerits, or the philosophy or anything about a candidate -- our sole role is to figure out if a filing was legal and accurate.”

He said Cullen’s challenge “was grandstanding of the first order, and I didn’t appreciate it.”

Cullen said he filed the challenge after Trump, during the weekend, resurrected the possibility that he would be open to running for president as an independent if he does not win the Republican presidential nomination and if he feels that he has not been treated fairly by the party.

In his complaint, Cullen wrote that Trump has a history of being a Democrat and an independent before changing his party affiliation to Republican. He noted that Trump has praised Democrat Hillary Clinton and contributed to her 2008 presidential campaign, as well as to the Clinton Foundation. Cullen also noted that Trump has spoken in a complimentary way about President Obama, who is also a Democrat.

He charged that Trump’s views, “expressed over decades, are inconsistent with the Republican Party platform and the Republican Party of New Hampshire’s Statement of Principles and By Laws.”

Cullen said he filed the complaint on his own behalf. He also said a super PAC promoting Ohio Gov. John Kasich for president, A New Day for America, was aware that he would be filing the complaint before he did so and is “on the same page” believing that Trump is not a true

Republican.” Cullen, however, said he is not supporting Kasich, or any candidate, for president at the moment.

Following the hearing, Cullen said Trump is destructive to the Republican Party and the country because, according to Cullen, Trump would “disregard” the 14th Amendment, which grants citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States.

Cullen said neither of his own parents were U.S. citizens when he was born, and “Donald Trump thinks that’s some kind of second class citizenship.”

“His disregard for the constitution should not be ignored by people any longer,” Cullen said. And, he said, “His affiliation with the Republican Party seems temporary. I don’t see any significant commitment.”

Cullen, asked if he had truly expected his challenge to be upheld, said, “I think we can no longer accept Trump’s dictatorial tendencies. The hope that this would go away or burn itself out has not worked. But he is a guy who is openly saying he’s going to disregard large parts of the constitution.”

“I’m not willing to sit around and watch it all play out,” Cullen said.

“This is a forum, and you fight Lee’s army where it is,” Cullen said of the Ballot Law Commission. “And this is one of the places where Trump is. I am raising the flag about the threat to democracy I think Donald Trump represents.”

Trump’s national campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski of Windham, returned fire.

“This is another example of the GOP elite trying to prevent Donald Trump from winning this election,” Lewandowski told WMUR.com in an interview. “Fergus Cullen is a failed state party chairman who couldn’t get elected to the (Republican) state committee moving forward. He is a paid political operative for the John Kasich campaign and he will do for t hem what he did for the state party, which is to rive t hem into the ground.”

But New Day for America spokeswoman Connie Wehrkamp said: "Despite this decision by the Ballot Law Commission, serious questions remain regarding Trump's anti-Republican record, including why did he contribute over $100,000 to Hillary Clinton's past campaigns and family foundation, and why has Trump threatened to run as an independent?

"It is important the voters of New Hampshire have faith that this process ensures the letters beside candidates' names are representative of party membership and shared values. We remain unconvinced that Mr. Trump is a committed member of the Republican Party."

Sanders Also Getting Burned

The dustup over a data breach that briefly erupted in the Democratic presidential primary last week isn’t over as far as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and his team are concerned.

In a conversation with Yahoo News, a top Sanders campaign adviser made a series of explosive allegations about how the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and a political technology company that works with the party handled the incident. According to the Sanders adviser, the DNC and NGP VAN, a firm that has a contract with the party organization to operate a voter file, have responded to the data breach by “leaking information” and “stonewalling an investigation” into the matter.

“We have demanded a full investigation from top to bottom,” the Sanders adviser said.

Sanders’ adviser noted that a lawsuit the campaign filed in federal court about the data breach last Friday, Dec. 18, is still ongoing, and described it as an attempt to get answers despite the party’s lack of cooperation. Even though both candidates appeared to support the investigation in the debate, it was clear that Clinton was hesitating. Bernie stated that he did not know if the Clinton campaign had access to his voter information at the same time the breach occurred, and Clinton avoided the question.

Because of the software issue, members of the Sanders campaign were able to access information that belonged to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. On Dec. 17, news of the incident broke and the Sanders campaign announced it had fired its national data director, Josh Uretsky, for taking advantage of the breach to access data belonging to Clinton. The top Sanders adviser told Yahoo News one of the remaining concerns is that Uretsky was recommended to the campaign by people with ties to the DNC and NGP VAN. He was their inside man, and it was he who was fired for accessing the Clinton voter information numerous times.

“It’s not as if we conjured this guy Josh from thin air. This is an individual … who was recommended to us by the DNC and NGP VAN,” “Andrew Brown spoke to us and gave him a positive review, as did this guy Bryan Whitaker,”

“I just think it’s utter hypocrisy on their part,” said the adviser. “I mean here we are being attacked for the behavior of an individual, which we ultimately fired. We agree he acted improperly, but it’s just amazing to me that this … individual that actually caused this trouble in our campaign was recommended by these guys.”

Uretsky was not the only person the Sanders campaign disciplined for being involved with the data breach. The campaign announced the suspension of two additional staffers after the Democratic presidential debate last Saturday night. The Sanders adviser did not say anyone other than Uretsky was recommended by people affiliated with the DNC or NGP VAN.

It is clear that the DNC, working on behalf of Clinton, inserted Josh as an agent inside the Sanders campaign to get the voter information to Clinton that Bernie might have discovered.

We may never know the extent to which this insider spying was going on, but it makes the Nixon break-in look like a missed freeway exit in comparison.

“I don’t know how you can more centrally connect this thing than those two entities,” the adviser explained. “Here we are being attacked by both of those entities when, in fact, they recommended this guy to the campaign.” Though Sanders’ team has not denied there was wrongdoing by members of its staff, it has objected to the fact Clinton’s team went public with its concerns. Sanders’ campaign also has described the DNC’s decision to close it out of the shared file as draconian and part of a pattern that shows the party is unfairly working to help protect Clinton’s frontrunner status in the primary.

According to the adviser it was ”outrageous” the Clinton campaign was given the audit logs that it showed to the media and Sanders’ team was not. The adviser said these logs were unquestionably given to the Clinton campaign by NGP VAN or the DNC.

“We have demanded a full investigation from top to bottom,” the adviser said. “Hillary Clinton agreed to it in the debate Saturday, and the DNC continues to stonewall a full investigation.”

Here are some good questions that people brought up.

1. What are the odds that a company that handles the data for so many campaigns would install a defective patch that removed the firewall? By the way, the VP of that company is the nephew of Debbie Wasserman Shultz.

2. Do you find it odd that the CEO of CGP formerly worked on the Clinton campaign and is a close personal friend of the Clintons?

3. Why did Hillary’s spin doctor immediately run to the press and lie to them, claiming that Bernie’s staff stole “millions of dollars worth of data,” when there was no public knowledge of what had happened yet?

4. Why did Debbie Wasserman Shultz lie to CNN, saying Bernie’s staff just looked at Hillary’s files, for an extended period of time, when none of that was true?

5. Isn’t it true that with the firewall down, Bernie’s grassroots files were visible by Hillary’s staff for the equal, if not longer, period of time?

To Infinite and Beyond

SpaceX, successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station during an orbital launch Monday night (Dec. 21). The historic accomplishment brings SpaceX a big step closer to developing fully and rapidly reusable rockets — technology that Musk says is vital to the colonization of Mars.

"It makes all the difference in the world — absolutely fundamental," Musk said in a teleconference after Monday night's launch and landing. "And I think it [the rocket landing] really dramatically improves my confidence that a city on Mars is possible. You know, that's what all this is about." [SpaceX's Epic Falcon 9 Rocket Landing in Pictures]

Indeed, Musk has said repeatedly that he founded SpaceX in 2002 primarily to help make humanity a multiplanet species. Colonizing Mars would lead to great scientific advances, would drastically lower humanity's odds of extinction and would be a great "adventure story" that would inspire and intrigue people around the world, Musk said Dec. 15 at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco.

Musk believes that humanity will have a hard time extending its footprint out into the solar system under the spaceflight status quo, which relies on expensive, expendable rockets. Reusable-rocket technology is a key innovation that could open up the heavens to exploration by slashing costs, Musk has said.

"The Falcon 9 rocket costs about $16 million to build — it is kind of like a big jet — but the cost of the propellant . . . is only about $200,000," he said during Monday night's telecon. "So that means that the potential cost reduction in the long term is probably in excess of a factor of a hundred."

So SpaceX has been developing reusable-rocket technology for years now. For example, the company flew a prototype called Grasshopper numerous times in 2012 and 2013, bringing the booster back down for soft landings at SpaceX's Texas test site after brief flights that reached a maximum altitude of 2,440 feet (744 meters).

SpaceX then began testing reusable versions of the Falcon 9, eventually gaining enough experience and confidence to fly the rocket's first stage back for landing attempts during orbital launches.

SpaceX managed to pull off "water landings" that lowered the booster stage softly into the Atlantic Ocean, and twice nearly succeeded in bringing the rocket down on an uncrewed ship. Both times — in January 2015, and again in April — the Falcon 9 first stage hit the target but toppled over on the ship's deck and exploded.

And on Monday night, the Falcon 9 made history, coming down for a soft landing during a launch that also delivered 11 satellites to orbit for SpaceX customer Orbcomm. (Blue Origin, a spaceflight company established by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, landed a rocket in November, but that accomplishment came after a flight to suborbital rather than orbital space.)

So the path to a Mars colony perhaps looks a little clearer today than it did yesterday. But humanity still has a lot of work to do to set up a permanent outpost on the Red Planet, Musk said.

"It will be superhard to do this, and it will take a lot of time," he said at AGU on Dec. 15. "I suspect I probably won't live to see it become self-sustaining."